(My father hated him. My mother always said I deserved better. My friends still keep his photo taped to a dartboard.)
“Sloane!” he says, like he’s genuinely pleased. “We didn’t get the chance to say hi.”
Sarah stops beside him, chewing gum, giving me a slow once-over drenched in disdain.
“Hi, Joe. There—we said hi.”
My voice is ice.
“You look… tired,” he says, tilting his head in fake concern. “Sure you can keep up? You were never very good with stress.”
The subtext is clear.
You’re pretending. You’ll crack.
Cohen’s hand tightens on my shoulder like a steel trap.
He doesn’t know who Joe is.
He doesn’t know what he did to me.
And I can’t tell him.
Because if I tell him Joe is my ex—the one who cheated on me—
I’ll have to tell himwhen.
I’ll have to tell him that the night I met Cohen at The Aureum, dressed as Lucifer, making the most reckless choice of my life…
I was there to forget Joe.
And if Cohen finds that out?
He’ll think he was a replacement.
A rebound.
A revenge stunt.
And it will ruin whatever this is becoming.
“Who’s your friend, Sloane?” Cohen asks, his voice calm—the kind of calm that comes before a hurricane.
Joe looks at him.
Challenge sparks in his eyes.
“Joe,” he says, not offering a hand. “An old family friend. We basically grew up together.”
A lie.
A deliberate shrinking of what we were.
Or worse—his way of claiming a closeness Cohen doesn’t have.
“Really?”
Cohen stands.
